Slurping, sipping, licking and burping ones way through Hong Kong. An attempt at a food and wine blog.

Monday, 16 June 2008

Pencarrow Pinot Noir 2006

Martinborough, New Zealand, $148, stelvin seal

We're in the process of moving house and it's not really fun. Our new place is in a village "just opposite" - too close to drive and just a tad further than you'd like to walk in the rain while trying to carry a mattress. We're exhausted and surrounded by piles of dusty junk that I'm amazed we've managed to accumulate in just two years. It's time to see if a little glass of Pinot before bed can help lighten the load. Pencarrow is the second label of Martinborough's Palliser Estate, but it's also the name of an English stately home where my Aunt once worked.

It's relatively dark in colour. The nose has warm and spicy about aromas of preserved cherries, cinnamon, Asian spice and a slight tartness. It's an interesting smelling wine and seems to have a touch of vanilla oakiness about it. The palate is initially sweet with flavours of strawberry jam and tomato, but there's a little earthiness as well that becomes particularly evident on the finish. Pencarrow Pinot Noir 2006 is rustic and surprisingly robust. It's big for a New Zealand Pinot, but one I quite enjoyed.

Hi EdwardAfraid the Pegau will be a little time away yet. Summer holidays really seem to cause me a big problem - all I do is eat and drink, yet get no time to write any posts - so trying to deal with a huge backlog. Had the Pegau on Monday night and enjoyed it. If I remember the cork had numbers, but they were a 6-15 so got a little confused. The smog's cleared thanks to Typhoon Hagupit passing through Tuesday night.You'd be interested to hear that I actually had a decent bottle of Chinese wine last night. I'll put it up when I get through the back-log. Hopefully shouldn't be too longCheersAndrew

I wonder if the code means it was from 2006 and the 1st or 2nd month. I know for instance on some Non vintage Champagne corks the 1st number is the year, the second is the month (but in twos, so 441 would be disgorged in 2004 on the 7th or 8th month, I have no idea what the 3rd number means though).

What grape was the Chinese wine? With all of the negative press regarding Chinese milk, I hope they did not use 'milk' products to fine the wine!

I was thinking the Pegau had to be 2006. It certainly didn't taste much older then that.

The Chinese wine was 'Tsing Tao Chardonnay 2005'. Apart from being home to the World's biggest brewery, Qingdao (as it's called these days) has a large wine industry. It was a pretty decent drop.

I think one of the tricks to Chinese wine is getting it relatively young. Chinese drinkers seem to associate bottle age with quality and as a result you find a lot of cheaper wine being 'cellared' in terrible conditions for years longer then is desirable.